We left sixteen-year-old Mermanjan in 1849 about to run away from Afghanistan to find her beloved Captain Thomas Maughan in north-west India (today Pakistan).  Accompanied only by a servant, Mermanjan rode her horse close to 1,000 miles from the Khyber Pass through Multan and Kohtri to Karachi. 

Watercolour of Indian landscapes, by Mermanjan? - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan  O’Kearney)

They encountered hardship and prejudice on the way, on account of being Muslim, but also found people who helped them on their way.   When the fugitives’ money ran out and they were facing hunger, Mermanjan decided to sell her ring at a local bazaar.  The shop owner paid them much less than it was worth, but an Indian soldier saw that they were being tricked and made the shop owner give them the rightful amount. 

Watercolours of Indian soldiers, probably by Thomas Maughan India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan  O’Kearney)

On their final stretch in Kotri when they had to cross the Indus river, they found that they didn’t have enough for the boat fare.  They pleaded with the boatman and even though he could not understand them, he had heard of Captain Maughan and his regiment. Presumably Mermanjan had written ahead to tell him that they would be arriving, and by chance the day before Thomas had sent an orderly to find them.  The boatman rushed off and caught the orderly just as he was about to buy his return ticket. He took the man to the travellers, and soon all was arranged. 

When the travelling party finally made it to Maughan’s bungalow, Mermanjan refused to dismount until her beloved came out: ‘he will only know me when he sees me on my black horse, for I am in rags and soiled and disfigured with boils and blisters and very ill’.  She sat there patiently but ‘almost fainting from fatigue and fear now that the terrible strain of her great adventure was nearly at an end.’  Maughan was urgently sent for and found her a ‘poor huddled little form’ seated on her black horse sobbing bitterly.  ‘Tenderly he carried her into her house and sent for the doctor… soon she was cared for and comforted but it was a long time before she recovered from the effects of her hardships and was very ill for many weeks’. 

In the early days after Mermanjan was reunited with Thomas, she could not be persuaded to see anyone, so nervous and frightened had she become.   A fellow Colonel remarked: ‘[he] always made an awful fuss over her, even to bathing her daily even when she was over twenty’, also buying her dolls and picture books as though she were a child.  From these years Mermanjan kept many of Thomas’s little drawings calculated to amuse his young wife - little ladies in crinolines; caricatures of his fellow officers.  She used account books to practise writing rows of letters as she gradually learnt to write in English.   She preferred seclusion ‘considered by the higher orders as indispensable to a woman after a marriage’ and took to flower arranging in the house.  

Caricatures of English Victorians in India by Thomas Maughan?  - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan  O’Kearney)

These were perhaps the happiest years of Mermanjan’s life. However, there was not to be a fairy-tale ending for our heroine.  Find out what happened next in Part 3!

Felicia Line
Independent researcher

Further reading:
Finding Mermanjan – the star of the evening – Part 1, Part 3, Part 4
Gertrude Dimmock, Mermanjan, Star of the Evening (Hendon Publishing Co. Nelson, 1970) 
India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304 Maughan Collection

Mermanjan's diary 

Stage productions had been censored since the Tudor era but the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 established a procedure of theatre censorship overseen by the Office of the Lord Chamberlain.  Most of the work was carried out by an official reader, the Examiner of Plays.

The Examiner of Plays wielded a substantial amount of power. The theatre was a powerful means of communication and the censors decided the limits of creative licence, often influenced by their own moral, religious and political leanings.

The British Library’s collection of manuscripts for plays submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for licensing begins in 1824 when playwright and theatre manager George Colman was appointed Examiner of Plays.

George Colman the Younger, unknown artist, early 19th century NPG D16212 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Colman was particularly concerned by political themes in plays, dictated, in part, by the tumultuous times in which he was working.  The government wished to repress radical reformist politics and passed new laws meting out harsher punishments for publishing blasphemous and seditious works.  Colman was quick to deny authors the chance to show their plays if he deemed them politically dangerous.

We can see how tough Colman was by his reaction to Mary Russell Mitford’s play, Charles the First, when it was submitted to him in 1825.

Add MS 42873, f.415. First folio of Mary Russell Mitford’s play Charles the First 

If we look at the entry in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office Day Book we can see that the play was refused a licence.

Add MS 53702, Lord Chamberlain’s Office Day Books, 1824-1852 - Mary Russell Mitford’s play Charles the First is refused a licence

Although, Mitford believed her play to be a favourable portrait of King Charles I, it was refused a licence.  Colman wrote to the Lord Chamberlain:  ‘…Charles the First (of England) – brings, instantly to mind the violent commotions & catastrophes of that unhappy Monarch’s reign…the piece abounds (blasphemously, I think) with Scriptural allusions & quotations, & invoked over & over again, by hypocrites, & regicides’.

Add MS 42873, f.408

As the threat of revolution was in the air, Colman deemed Mitford’s representation of the execution of a King far too dangerous to allow on stage.  The Lord Chamberlain agreed.  Colman’s reply to the theatre owner was casually dismissive: ‘I have less regret in communicating this intelligence as I think you might have anticipated it’.

Mitford’s response to her censor showed that Colman had already threatened to censor her next project: ‘I shall not now meddle with Henry the Second – especially as I believe that I perceive the reason which induces you to think the subject is a bad one’.

Add MS 42873, f.413

Mitford realised that themes of conflict and betrayal against authority were never going to pass the censor and so decided not to pursue her project, exercising self-censorship.  Colman’s reputation as a harsh judge meant that authors often chose not to test him, as it was likely they would fail to receive a play licence. 

To the dismay of many playwrights, Colman continued to hold the office of Examiner of Plays until his death in 1836.  Until the end, he proved dedicated to his cause and many playwrights after Mitford were refused the right to produce their plays.

Jessica Gregory
Curatorial Support Officer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further reading:
J. R. Stephens, The Censorship of English Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Add MS 42865- 43038, Plays submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office for licensing under the provisions of the Acts regulating the performance of stage plays
Add MS 53702-53708, Chamberlain’s Office Day Books. Registers of plays received in the Lord Chamberlain’s office

 

While sorting through family papers, I discovered that my grandmother Gertrude Dimmock had written a book about Mermanjan, an Afghan noblewoman who had run away to India after falling in love with an English army officer in 1849.  This was a true story told by Mermanjan to my great-grandmother Beatrice Dunsterville, wife of a Surgeon Major in the Indian Medical Service.

Photograph of Mermanjan in the early days of her marriage - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 

Beatrice inherited all Mermanjan’s ‘treasured relics’ including her traditional dress, her personal diary and letters, first-hand accounts of her story, and paintings and sketches by her husband Thomas Maughan.  She wanted her story to be told to the world. Many years later, my grandmother pieced together the story of ‘love and hate, joy and sorrow, faith, courage, and endurance’ and published Mermanjan – Star of the Evening.  Gertrude donated the papers and drawings to the India Office Private Papers at the British Library and the traditional dress is held in the British in India Museum in Nelson, Lancashire.

I decided to delve deeper into this extraordinary intercultural love story.  An account by Thomas Maughan tells how he met his future wife in 1849 when serving in Afghanistan with the Bombay Army.  Whilst out riding one evening, he happened to pass Mermanjan, aged about sixteen, mounted on a spirited black horse in her national costume, accompanied by male escorts. Mermanjan was the only daughter of an Afghan noble, niece of the Amir of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed and of the Durani tribe of the Afghans. Her father owned a lot of land around Peshwar and her mother was Circassian who had tragically passed away a few years before. 

Sketch by Thomas Maughan of Mermanjan when they first met - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/14 (Copyright - heirs of Mermanjan O'Kearney)

Maughan wrote how it was ‘love at first sight- a strong lasting never swerving devotion became our destiny from that moment'.

 

Sketches of Mermanjan by Thomas Maughan -  India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan O'Kearney)

The attraction was reciprocal: Mermanjan found Thomas to be ‘the most handsomest and most splendid figure of a man that she had ever seen, and childlike she turned to look after him as they passed and found that the officer also turned to look back at her’.

Sketches (maybe of Thomas Maughan?) and British soldiers carrying out drills - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan O'Kearney)

They met again, ‘exchanging ardent looks’.   Mermanjan arranged to ride out alone, and Thomas followed her at a distance.  She led the way to a deserted orange garden, where the ‘romance that soon deepened into devotion’ started. They did not speak the same language, but Mermanjan reminisced romantically that ‘the language of the eyes is eloquent enough in the East’.

Mermanjan was a devout Muslim, and Thomas a Christian.  Christian marriage ‘would have been but a prelude to the certain and cruel death [of Mermanjan] at the hands of her incensed relatives’.  Therefore they were united by the simple ‘Nikkah’ ceremony which is a celebration of the marriage contract without religious rites or social festivities.

Then Thomas had to leave Afghanistan: ‘...vainly the infatuated man implored her to fly with him, tears even coursing down his manly cheeks.  However though she could not make him understand in her language that to attempt to leave with him would mean pursuit by her fierce father and valiant brothers  and certain death for her and renewed hostilities with the soldiers, she remained obdurate and with breaking heart took leave of her lover and true husband’.   Thomas returned to India, and Mermanjan became intensely depressed through separation from her beloved husband.

After a few months, Mermanjan decided to run away to find Thomas, accompanied by a faithful slave and armed with a dagger ‘to protect her honour on her perilous journey’.

To be continued…!

Felicia Line
Independent researcher

Further reading:
Gertrude Dimmock, Mermanjan, Star of the Evening (Hendon Publishing Co. Nelson, 1970) 
India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304 Maughan Collection

Finding Mermanjan Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Mermanjan's diary 

 

As Pride month draws to a close we take a look at the censorship of Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the problems the censoring authorities had with its overt references to homosexuality.

Front cover of the copy of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office in 1955. British Library, Add MS 68871.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof stands as one of Tennessee Williams’ best-loved plays.  The play’s first performances on Broadway in 1955 met with popular and critical acclaim and it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that same year.  Problems arose, however, when the play was prepared for production in England where it faced censorship at the hands of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office which was responsible for licensing all plays performed on the British stage.  Concerned at its content, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office sought to excise all swear words and references to homosexuality from the play.

Passages marked in blue pencil by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office were deemed inappropriate for public performance. Here the Examiner of Plays objects to the play’s swear words. British Library, Add MS 68871.

The Stage Licensing Act of 1737 (reinforced by the Theatres Act of 1843) required that all plays intended for public performance in Great Britain had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for examination and licensing.  Plays were submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and were checked by an Examiner of Plays.  The Examiner recommended whether a licence for performance should be granted or not and any content that was considered inappropriate was cut.  All cuts and amendments were made in blue pencil by the Examiners.  Any play could be banned and the Lord Chamberlain did not need to provide a reason for his decision.  This process of censoring plays in Great Britain lasted from 1737 until 1968 when the law was repealed.   

Passages marked in blue pencil by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office objecting to the play’s references to homosexuality. British Library, Add MS 68871.

Set in the Mississippi Delta, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof examines the complicated relationships among members of Big Daddy Pollitt's family – particularly between Brick and his wife Cat.  Themes such as truth and falsehood, life and death, relationships and sexuality are explored throughout the play and it was this last, dealing with sexuality, that caused the Lord Chamberlain’s Office most concern. 

At the heart of the play is Brick, a troubled man who has become an alcoholic following the death of his friend, Skipper.  Brick’s family struggle to maintain functional relationships in the wake of his despair, whilst Brick’s wife, recognises the possibility that her husband may have had a romantic attachment to Skipper.

It was still a criminal offence to be gay in the United Kingdom in 1955 and the Lord Chamberlain’s Office cut all references to Brick’s homosexuality.  The cuts removed much of the depth and complexity in the relationship between Brick and Skipper and as a result Tennessee Williams rejected the amendments, forcing the Lord Chamberlain's Office to refuse a licence for the play to be performed.

 Passages marked in blue pencil by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office objecting to the play’s references to homosexuality, despite their importance to the play as a whole. British Library, Add MS 68871.

Yet, whilst the Lord Chamberlain’s Office could ban a play from public performance, it had no jurisdiction over private performances which could take place in ‘private’ theatres often established as club theatres where access was granted to audiences who paid a nominal subscription to the club.  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was first performed ‘privately’ in Britain for The New Watergate Club at The Comedy Theatre in January 1958.  Founded with the intention of staging plays without censorship, the club boasted 64,000 members at the time of the play’s premiere and helped undermine the authority of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office enabling plays with LGBTQ content to be performed uncensored.

The Comedy Theatre, now The Harold Pinter Theatre, where The New Watergate Club put on the first British performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof despite the Lord Chamberlain’s ban. Image CC BY 3.0 from Wikipedia

Daniel Brass, King’s College, London, and Alexander Lock, Curator Modern Archives and Manuscripts

 

A radical political thinker known as the ‘father of Russian socialism’, Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) witnessed first-hand the democratic and liberal revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848. Leaving Russia for Paris in 1847, Herzen soon became disillusioned with the uprisings which sought to replace European monarchies with republican government, but which resulted in the deaths and exile of thousands of people. His collection of essays ‘From the Other Shore’ explores the failures of the revolution. Originally written in Russian and sent to his friends in Moscow, he described the work as ‘a record of a strife in which I have sacrificed many things, but not the boldness of knowledge’ (‘To my Son’, Add MS 89364/1).

‘The Two Shores’, title page, Add MS 89364/1

The British Library has recently acquired an English manuscript translation from the late 19th century entitled ‘The Two Shores’. Although unpublished and unsigned, the translation can been attributed to the English suffragist and writer Lady Jane Maria Strachey (1840-1928). A letter addressed to Strachey by her friend Mlle Souvestre refers to her translation of Herzen’s work (29 October 1874, 9/27/G/064, Strachey Letters, The Women’s Library, LSE) and this particular manuscript was sold from the papers of her son, Giles Lytton Strachey, in 2015.

Strachey was an active feminist with a keen interest in politics. She moved in literary and political circles that included George Eliot and the leader of the women’s suffrage movement, Millicent Fawcett. Bold and forward thinking, it is easy to see why Herzen’s essays appealed to Strachey. Her translation begins with Herzen’s address to his son Alexander, in which the revolutionary spirit of the work is clear:

‘I am not afraid of placing in your young hands the protest – at times bold to rashness – of an independent mind against a system which is obsolete servile & lying, against those absurd idols of former times which are now stripped of all meaning and are ending their days in our midst,
hindering some and terrifying others’.

‘To my Son’, Add MS 89364/2. Reproduced with permission from The Society of Authors as agents of The Strachey Trust.

Another passage articulates Herzen’s continued faith in socialist and individualist ideals – not dissimilar to Strachey’s own – despite his disappointment in the liberal revolutionaries:

‘… do not remain upon the shore of the old world – better perish, than seek safety in the hospital of re-action. Faith in a future social organisation is the only religion I bequeath you, it offers no paradise, & no rewards but those of our own Conscience’.

German and French editions: Add MSS 89364/3 and 89364/4

Acquired with the manuscript were the first printed edition of Herzen’s work, a German copy ‘Vom anderen Ufer’, published in Hamburg in 1850, and a French translation ‘De l’autre rive’ (Geneva, 1871). The French edition was the source for this translation, which appears in draft form and was seemingly never published. Indeed, the first English translation of ‘From the Other Shore’ was not published until 1956. In this case Strachey’s translation – if it is by her – is likely to be the earliest translation of Herzen’s essays into English.

As well as providing an insight into the translation process, then, this manuscript and its accompanying volumes also reveal the radical political reading of an important figure in the British feminist movement. It further hints at Herzen’s engagement with British intellectuals in London, where he lived during the 1850s and 60s, and the reception of his writing in British political thought.

Further reading:

All translations cited are from 'The Two Shores', an English manuscript translation of Alexander Herzen's ‘From The Other Shore’, Add MS 89364

Alexander Herzen, From the other Shore, translated from the Russian by Moura Budberg; and The Russian People and Socialism: an open letter to Jules Michelet, translated from the French by Richard Wollheim; with an introduction by Isaiah Berlin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1956)

On Jane Maria Strachey, see: R. Vetch, ‘Strachey, Sir Richard (1817–1908), scientist and administrator in India’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) [accessed 28 May 2019]

By Sara Hale
Heritage Made Digital and Modern Archives and Manuscripts

An apparently ordinary early-20th century application for a King’s India cadetship within the India Office Records contains a traumatic story from the time of the Indian Uprising or ‘Mutiny’.

On 31 January 1908 Mrs Louisa Sutherland of Bedford took it upon herself to pen an appeal to the War Office on behalf of her teenage son.  Her five-page letter was forwarded, and reached the India Office on 10 February. 

IOR/L/MIL/7/13035

Her reason for writing was unambiguous: ‘The request and favour I now humbly and respectfully crave is that my son Herbert Orr Sutherland may be granted a King’s Honorary Cadetship in His Majesty’s Indian Army, on his passing the necessary qualifying examination … My desire is to secure for him a Commission … beyond the accident of the matter of a few marks in an open competition …'. 

Mrs Sutherland's father, Captain Patrick James Orr, had been an Assistant Commissioner in the freshly annexed state of Oudh when native troops rebelled in May 1857.  Five-year-old Louisa and her mother Hannah were sent by night to seek the protection of a local Rajah, while Captain Orr stayed at his post to protect the Treasury.  Things, however, did not go to plan:
‘ … my Father was recognized by some of the men of his old regiment who called upon him to throw down his arms and said they would spare his life.  He was notoriously feared, loved and respected by the men who had served under him, and it was through the fidelity of these men that he … was escorted by them and placed under the protection of that same Rajah …'.

This protection proved illusory, however, for they spent more than two months in the jungle ‘ … exposed to the prowlings of wild animals, to the fiery heat and torrential rains of a tropical climate, without any shelter or covering, bare-footed and with scanty tattered clothing, and subsisting on the coarsest and poorest of diet barely sufficient to keep body and soul together …'.

Foster 884 - John Trivett Nettleship, Tiger drinking at a jungle pool (c.1880) Images Online

The family and the small number of Europeans who were with them were sold to the mutineers at Lucknow, which they reached on 26 October.  The four men in the party were then taken out and shot on 16 November.  Incredibly, in mid-February 1858 ‘ … after some negotiations between General Outram’s camp and one of the officials of the Rebel Durbar I was smuggled out of the City as a corpse after having been coloured to represent a native child’.

1781.c.13 - View from General Outram's headquarters at Lucknow from General views and special points of interest of the city of Lucknow, from drawings made on the spot by D. S. D[odgson] Images Online

On 19 March Mrs Orr and Miss Madeline Jackson, the only other surviving European from the original party, were rescued, and mother and child were re-united the following day.  Mrs Sutherland sought to bolster her case by mentioning that two of her paternal uncles had served on General Outram’s staff.

If Louisa Sutherland thought that recounting her family’s dreadful sufferings would melt the hearts of the India Office’s bureaucracy and gain a cadetship for her son, she was to be cruelly deceived. The cover of the file bears the word ‘Ineligible’.

IOR/L/MIL/7/13035

Hedley Sutton
Asian & African Studies Reference Services Team Leader

Further reading:
IOR/L/MIL/7/13035 Collection 288/27 Application by Mrs Sutherland for honorary King's India Cadetship for her son, as special case on account of Mutiny experience
M Wylie (ed.) The English captives in Oudh: an episode in the history of the mutinies of 1857-58,  (1858)
Martin Richard Gubbins, An Account of the Mutinies in Oudh, and of the Siege of the Lucknow Residency (1858)

 

There is a book-stamp on the front pastedown of Davis 692, Johann Carion, Chronica Carionis…Auffs neuve in Lateinischer Sprach beschrieben, und…vermehret…durch Herrn Philippum Melanthonem, und Doctorem Casparum Peucerum, Wittenberg: H. Krafft, 1573.  This indicates that the volume was formerly in the collection of Lucien Désiré Prosper Graux (1878-1944).  Graux’s name appears on a report listing French Private Collections compiled in 1943 by the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (The Roberts Commission), as part of their identification of cultural property at risk on the European continent.

  Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historical Monuments in War Areas (The Roberts Commission), 1943-1946, National Archives, College Park, Maryland, M1944, Record Group 239, Roll 0021

Dubbed the ‘Prince of Bibliophiles,’ and collecting over two decades, Graux amassed one of the largest and most spectacular private collections of books and manuscripts in the first half of the twentieth century in France.  Consisting of over 10,000 volumes, the collection excelled in  French, German and Italian literature, fine-bindings, historical and literary manuscripts, music, and illustrated books, amongst others.  Housed in his mansion at 33 Avenue Kleber in Paris, books were not the only pursuits for which Graux was noteworthy: as a doctor, entrepreneur, writer and publisher, Graux crossed disciplinary boundaries, and contributed widely to medical, social, political and literary fields.
 

Detail, Ex-libris of Doctor Lucien-Graux on the front pastedown of Davis 692

Graux received his early training in medicine, finding success in his position as editor of the Gazette Médicale de Paris, and shortly thereafter wealth in filing a patent for the drug Urodonal.  At the end of the First World War, Graux turned his attention toward the founding of Arys, a perfume company.  He became an advisor to a number of French ministries during the 1920s, including the foreign trade, for which he oversaw a number of diplomatic missions.  His work for the French state ultimately earned him the title, Knight of the Legion of Honour.  Another venture, Graux’s publishing house Les Amis du docteur, published bibliophilic booklets, original engravings, and his own historical and biographical essays, fantastical novels, and topics including, medicine, science, and the occult, further reflecting his vast, varied and interdisciplinary interests.

With his interests in the occult and supernatural, some have referred to him as a spiritualist.  But his response to the depredation of man during the Second World War might characterize him as a humanist.  In June 1940, shortly after the German occupation of France, Graux joined the resistance.  Discovered and arrested by the Gestapo in the spring of 1944, he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in June, where he was murdered on 10 October 1944.

Despite the wide-scale confiscation and looting of property throughout France under the Nazi occupation, and the Roberts Commission’s identification of Graux’s collection being at risk, Graux’s collection remained intact.  Retained by his widow, Mme Lucien Graux (née Léontine de Flavigny), Graux’s library was sold through the Galerie Charpentier at Hotel Drouot Auction house, Paris, in nine sales between 1953 and 1957.

Davis 692 is presumed to have been purchased from the sale on 26 January 1957 by antiquarian book-seller Bernard Breslauer, from whom it was purchased by Henry Davis on 6 August 1959.  In addition to Davis 692, many works under Graux’s authorship can be found in the British Library Catalogue.

Antonia Bartoli
Spoliation Curator, British Library Printed Heritage Projects

Further information:
The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries public lecture given by Antonia Bartoli.
Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research I - The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries
Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research at the British Library II - the Collection of Jean Furstenberg 

 

Building on a recent Science blog post, this post focuses on a lab notebook belonging to developmental biologist Dr Anne McLaren (1927-2007). What hidden connections does this lab notebook contain and why might it interest scientists and non-scientists alike?

Figure 1. Title page of the notebook (Add MS 83844). Copyright © Estate of Anne McLaren.

McLaren’s research on mice has contributed to many fields, including in vitro fertilization (IVF) and stem cell research. Laying the groundwork for such contributions, McLaren’s lesser-known research project from 1952-1959 explored the genetic effects that a mother’s uterus—not just the material contained in the egg—had on the development of an embryo. To study this, she and her then-husband Dr Donald Michie took two strains of mice, one genetically disposed to have 5 lumbar vertebrae (C3H) and the other to have 6 (C57), and developed a technique of transferring fertilized embryos from a donor of one strain to a surrogate mouse from the other strain. Surprisingly, the transferred babies predominantly took after their surrogate mother in number of lumbar vertebrae—and even today, the mechanisms by which this effect functions are not fully understood.

One notebook, Add MS 83844, contains most of the raw results from this embryo transfer research; however, it also contains a hidden connection. In the summer of 1958, while these experiments were underway, McLaren worked with Dr John Biggers (1923-2018) to culture 249 fertilized embryos for 48 hours in vitro (in glass) before transplanting them into surrogate mice. After 19 days of gestation, these transplants resulted in the birth of two mice, which McLaren called “bottled babies” and were the first mammals cultured outside of a uterine environment pre-implantation (McLaren and Biggers).

Add MS 83844 makes no mention of its relationship to this landmark discovery, and yet, without the embryo transfer work it documents, the bottled babies would not have been. Similarly, McLaren’s later work shows how she continued to use the processes developed during the transplant and in vitro experiments, such as in her experiments with chimeras, or mice made from mixing two different 8-cell eggs before implantation. The notebooks therefore provide unique insight into the interconnected nature of scientific exploration.

Figure 2. Two pages from the notebook showing experiment notations, vertebrae counts, and various stains. (Add MS 83844). Copyright © Estate of Anne McLaren.

The notebook also showcases for scientific and non-scientific readers alike the human, material, and even quotidian processes that scientific advancement relies on. Just a quick browse of the pages emphasizes the years of painstaking work required to arrive at a breakthrough like the IVF mice, as well as showing some of the ways that McLaren systematically managed the dense information produced over those years (lumbar vertebrae counts appear in the notebooks in pink ink, for example, to make them stand out). Each page contains detailed observations, small corrections, and sometimes even notes like this, which records a short tale of an escaped mouse.

Figure 3. Detail from the notebook recording a mouse as 'Escaped, prob. lost.' (Add MS 83844).Copyright © Estate of Anne McLaren.

In addition to the written material, the pages bear traces of marks, spills, and stains that result from the unpredictable realities of laboratory work. Collectively, this notebook’s mosaic of material traces helps document scientific processes in ways that can be overlooked when looking at polished published papers.

Bridget Moynihan

PhD student, University of Edinburgh

As a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, Bridget Moynihan’s research focuses on archival ephemera and digital humanities. These same interests led Bridget to undertake a British Library internship, researching the notebooks of Dr. Anne McLaren.

Further reading:

McLaren, A. and Biggers, JD. “Successful Development and Birth of Mice Cultivated in vitro as Early Embryos.” Nature 182, 1958: 877-878.